Planning for tourism development can take place at various levels. Some
countries have national tourism development plans and it is not unusual
within this national structure to find similar planning exercises having been
made for subnational regions, towns, cities, etc. The concept of planning is
very wide. Planning is essentially about the utilization of tourism assets and
their development into a marketable state. So before the planning exercise
begins it is necessary to set out tourism development objectives, i.e. what the
development plan seeks to achieve.
These planning objectives are often formulated into a tourism policy
statement which sets out parameters or guidelines which steer development
planning into the future. A tourism policy is not a tourism plan, but
rather the reference point against which planning decisions should be
related. Once the tourism policy has been agreed and established, usually
by government, then a tourism planning exercise seeks to achieve the
objectives which have been incorporated into the policy. The planning
exercise must incorporate considerations of implementation i.e. how the
plan is to be achieved. Following from implementation there is a need to
establish a monitoring mechanism which constantly reviews the implementation
of the plan against the set objectives. Very often monitoring
might be highly specific, e.g. relating to number of forecast tourist arrivals
or earnings from tourism; or sometimes it will be much less formalized
e.g. in relation to cultural impacts of tourism. The monitoring of tourism
development is important because it is likely that not all policy objectives
can be achieved and therefore there is a need to refine and probably
reformulate the plan.
There are six stages in tourism development planning:
1 The establishment of objectives.
2 The incorporation of these objectives into a policy statement.
3 The formulation of policy guidelines to establish planning parameters.
4 An implementation programme to achieve what is set out in the plan.
5 A monitoring mechanism to assess whether the tourism development
plan is meeting its objectives.
6 A review process to revise and refine objectives and policies as
necessary.
This sequence is ongoing and should be used as a flexible rather than a rigid
approach to tourism development.